Scandinavia

project: Beyond Legalism: Amnesties, Transition and Conflict Transformation

Grant Holder: Professor K McEvoy
Amnesty laws are an important but often contentious way for states to quell dissent, end conflict or shield state agents from prosecution. This project aims to move beyond legalistic debates to produce an analysis of the consequences of enacting amnesty laws during transitional periods, based on fieldwork in five jurisdictions worldwide. The website contains the Amnesty Law Database comprising materials relating to over 500 amnesty laws enacted since the end of World War Two. [read more]

project: Connecting Cornwall: Telecommunications, Locality and Work in West Britain 1870-1918

Grant Holder: Dr Richard Noakes
Cornwall has a number of significant historical communications sites starting with Porthcurno and ranging over early radio sites at Poldhu and the Lizard to Land’s End and Bodmin Radio and the Satellite station at Goonhilly. The ‘Connecting Cornwall’ project will be using the Cable and Wireless historic archive to develop new research into the communications industry in Cornwall with an emphasis on the Eastern Telegraph Company in the first instance. [read more]

project: Designing for services in science and technology-based enterprises

Grant Holder: Ms Lucy Kimbell
Designing for Services in Science and Technology-Based Enterprises was an interdisciplinary research project initiated by Saïd Business School (SBS) at the University of Oxford. This one-year study (2006-2007) explored how academics, service designers, and science and technology entrepreneurs understand the designing of services in science and technology-based enterprises. Three case studies were set up in which one science-based service enterprise was paired with a design consultancy, working together for six days over several months. [read more]

project: In an arena including digital and traditional artists' publishing formats - what will be the canon for the artist's book in the 21st Century?

Grant Holder: Miss Sarah Bodman
This project investigated and discussed issues concerning the history and future of the artist’s book. Our aim was to extend and sustain critical debate of what constitutes an artist’s book in the 21st Century - in order to propose an inclusive structure for the academic study, artistic practice and historical appreciation of the artist’s book. All of the research outcomes, including the publication A Manifesto for the Book, audio and video files,interviews and case studies are downloadable from the project website. http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/canon.htm [read more]

project: Germanic possessive -s : an empirical, historical and theoretical study

Grant Holder: Professor Kersti Börjars
Two much-debated questions in recent theoretical linguistics concern the historical origin of grammatical markers and their synchronic status. Researchers have adduced key evidence for both from the evolution of English possessive -s and the related but subtly different constructions in Swedish and Dutch. What has not to date been attempted, and what the present proposal offers, is a systematic synchronic and diachronic comparison of these constructions across all three languages. [read more]

project: An exploration of the potential for new narrative experiences in first person perspective gaming.

Grant Holder: Mr Daniel Pinchbeck
First person perspective, or shooter, (FPS) games are mass-market virtual realities, whose cultural significance is increasingly clear, yet their content is tends to be problematic, often highly violent, with very limited emotional depth or semantic complexity, and utilising a tiny number of narratives and archetypes. [read more]

project: Around 1968: Activism, Networks, Trajectories

Grant Holder: Professor Robert Gildea
This is a study of militants, the networks they constructed and the trajectories they followed in Europe between 1965-75. It is a collective project, undertaken by 14 historians, 7 based in the UK, 7 outside. It is based on archival work and the collection of oral testimony from a sample of networks and activists involved in them in each country. [read more]

project: The origin and spread of stock-keeping in the Near East and Europe

Grant Holder: Professor Stephen Shennan
In western Eurasia we know that the earliest evidence for domestic farmyard animals occurs around 10,000 years ago. We also know that farming then spread westwards through Europe over the subsequent millennia, arriving in the far west and north of Europe some 6,000 years ago. For decades there have been major debates as to the nature of this spread, with many basic questions still remaining largely unanswered. The objective of this major research project, which has been funded for four years by the AHRC, is to address these questions. [read more]

project: Christianisation and state-formation in Northern and Central Europe c.900-c.1200

Grant Holder: Dr Nora Berend
We analysed the connection between religious change (Christianisation) and political change (the development of centralised power) in Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus'. In all these areas the final conversion to Christianity was initiated from above. Yet there were also significant differences between the regions in how Christianisation and monarchy were linked. We composed a detailed questionnaire and included history, archaeology and art history in our analysis. Our aims were to compare the various areas, looking at both the primary sources and the national literature. [read more]

project: The origin and spread of Neolithic plant economies in the Near East and Europe

Grant Holder: Dr Sue Colledge
The nature of the processes by which the economic and cultural elements regarded as Neolithic spread from the Near East across Europe continues to be the subject of much debate, despite or perhaps because of the lack of detailed information about what those elements were and how they differed from region to region. [read more]